The case of a former day care center teacher convicted 13 years ago of sexually abusing a local child was back in Mendocino County Superior Court Wednesday for a restitution hearing after a Missouri criminal grand jury in October indicted him for allegedly distributing child pornography.

Eric Lee Bederson had his first court appearance on the child pornography charges March 19 -- the day the grand jury's indictment was unsealed -- in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Mo., according to the Kansas City Star.

On the same day, the Mendocino County District Attorney's Office requested a status conference on restitution for Bederson's 1999 child molestation case, according to the Mendocino County Superior Court.

"When he was captured, he had a lot of cash, and it's been sitting in a trust fund since," said Mendocino County Deputy District Attorney Beth Norman, who appeared in court Wednesday to request a court order to release the money to a fund for crime victims.

When Judge Richard Henderson said he didn't know what authority the court had to do that, Norman said the cash was on Bederson's person and "no one came forward to claim it."

Henderson wanted to see proof of service, and Norman said she could provide it in three weeks. The hearing was continued to April 25 at 8:30 a.m. in Dept. A of the Ukiah courthouse.

According to a Jan. 31, 2000 Ukiah Daily Journal article, Bederson had more than $6,000 in cash and rare coins with him when Canadian and U.S. Customs agents detained him after checking his documents as he was trying to board a Toronto-bound train at Port Huron, Mich., near the Canadian border, and found that he was facing felony child molestation charges in Mendocino County.

Bederson, a child development major at Mendocino College, was hired in 1996 as a teacher in the college's day care center, and graduated from the college in June 1999.

He was suspended from his job at the day care center when he was investigated on suspicion of molesting two girls in April 1998, and was reinstated when the case was dropped for lack of evidence, according to prior reports. The college fired Bederson, classified as a temporary employee, when new allegations surfaced in 1999.

The allegations included reports that he touched the vaginal areas of as many as eight girls in his care between the ages of 4 and 8 years old, according to prior Daily Journal reports. Police at the time also reported finding child pornography on his home computer.

Bederson pleaded guilty in May 2000 to one count of continuous sexual abuse of a child younger than 11 years old in Mendocino County Superior Court, and was sentenced to 16 years in prison. He took a plea deal that involved dismissing a second count of continuous sexual abuse of a child, two counts of lewd or lascivious acts with a child and a special allegation of possessing child pornography, according to local court records.

The Missouri grand jury indicted Bederson in October last year on six counts of distributing child pornography over the Internet, including a picture allegedly sent from one of his e-mail accounts Sept. 29, three videos on Oct. 1, an image Oct. 6 and another video Oct. 8, according to the indictment document, filed with the U.S. District Court, Western District of Missouri, Western Division.

Tiffany Revelle can be reached at udjtr@ukiahdj.com, on Twitter @TiffanyRevelle or at 468-3523.